Why “Again” Is the Word That Anchors Us All

Repetition, Regulation, and the Healing Power of Ritual

The podcast began—like most meaningful things do—in the middle of chaos, somewhere between daycare pickup and the unraveling hour before dinner.

The story was simple, almost archetypal. A prince who had everything he was supposed to want—wealth, status, comfort—and still felt hollow.
“I seek happiness,” he said. “All the riches in the world have not brought me joy.”

When the story ended, the car went still. My children didn’t say much at first. There was just that thoughtful pause. Then came the request:

“Can we hear it again?”

Of course they asked.

These are the same kids—my own—who want the same bedtime books night after night. They ask for the same silly voices, the same ending lines, the same exact spot under the blanket where they feel most tucked in. They already know what happens next, yet that’s not the point. The point is the rhythm. The safety. The presence.

In my office, the children I work with—students and therapy clients—often ask to play the same games each session. These are not just time-fillers. They’re tools we use to process, to explore, to feel. Games like Feelings Safari, where we draw cards that name different emotions and create playful but meaningful scenarios. Sometimes we draw out emotions visually—storyboarding a difficult day or mapping a moment that felt overwhelming. Often, the children request the same game, the same deck, even the same sequence. The familiarity isn’t a crutch—it’s a bridge. It creates enough safety for something new to emerge.

Even the baby knows. We play peekaboo over and over. I hide my face behind my hands, then reappear—“Boo!”—and she bursts into laughter like it’s the best surprise in the world. She’s not tired of the repetition. She’s delighted by it. The joy gets deeper, not duller.

Repetition often gets a bad reputation. It’s seen as the opposite of progress. There’s cultural pressure to always move forward, to chase the next new thing, to evolve constantly.

Yet repetition is not the absence of growth.
It’s the quiet foundation of it.

Neuroscience supports what children seem to know instinctively. Repetition doesn’t just soothe—it reshapes. Each time we return to a familiar story, a grounding practice, or a safe rhythm, our brains respond. Neural pathways strengthen. Safety registers. Emotional regulation becomes more accessible. Over time, those repeated patterns become internal tools—ways we learn to calm ourselves, to connect, to remember who we are.

Repetition, from a brain-based perspective, is how we build resilience.
It’s how abstract ideas become lived experience.
It’s not a sign that we’re standing still.
It’s a sign that something meaningful is taking root.

Repetition also lays the groundwork for mastery—not just in childhood, but throughout our lives. It’s how skills are refined, how creative processes deepen, how craft becomes art.

I’ve been writing for years. I return to the same practice again and again—facing the blank page, reshaping words, rewriting sentences that once felt finished. Every time, I discover something new. A sentence that could land more softly. A rhythm I hadn’t heard before. A deeper truth I wasn’t quite ready to name the last time I tried.

Mastery doesn’t come from doing something once.
It comes from showing up repeatedly, with attention and humility.
Each repetition creates space for refinement, growth, and insight.
What once felt ordinary begins to reveal something richer.
What once felt beyond us slowly becomes ours.

Children use repetition to build emotional fluency.
Adults use it to build creative, relational, and spiritual fluency, too.

Children return to what works. They’re not regressing. They’re reinforcing. They’re learning how to trust the pattern, how to settle into rhythm, how to feel safe inside their own bodies and stories.
Again is not a refusal to change—
it’s what allows change to take root.

Spiritual traditions have long understood this. We say the same prayers. We walk the same paths. We retell the same stories. Not from habit, but from intention. The words may remain the same, yet the person saying them is never quite who they were the last time.

Every repetition becomes a new encounter.
A deeper listening.
A mirror reflecting where we’ve been,
where we’re growing,
and what still matters.

Repetition is not a loop.
It’s a spiral.
A return that leads us inward.

There is sacredness in doing something again.
A whispered reminder that we are not machines built for endless efficiency.
We are human beings shaped by rhythm, by ritual, by return.

Our souls respond to pattern.
Our nervous systems settle into familiarity.
Our growth unfolds not in constant motion,
but in gentle revisiting.

What seems like repetition on the surface is often something more profound underneath—
a process of integration,
of deepening,
of slowly becoming who we are.

Growth is rarely a straight line.
It doesn’t always look like forward momentum.
Sometimes it’s a spiral, winding us through old ground in a new way.

We revisit lessons we thought we had mastered,
only to find that life is offering us a new layer,
a deeper insight,
a softer landing.

Repetition doesn’t mean we’re stuck.
It means we’re staying long enough to be changed.

We return to the same story.
The same practice.
The same prayer.

Not out of stagnation—
but because something still lives there for us.
Something we weren’t ready for the first time.
Something we can hold with new hands now.

The circle isn’t a detour from growth.
It is the path.

We are drawn back to the center, again and again—
not to start over,
but to begin more fully.
With more wisdom.
With more tenderness.
With more of ourselves.

When a child says, “again,” they are not stalling.
They are anchoring.
They are reaching for something that brought them joy, or clarity, or connection.
They are trying to hold it a little longer.
They are saying: that mattered. I want to know it more deeply.

What if we gave ourselves permission to do the same?

What if we honored the practice of return—
not as repetition for its own sake,
but as a path to presence?

We all need a little more again in our lives.
Not for nostalgia.
For grounding.
For remembering who we are.
For becoming.

Repetition doesn’t take us away from meaning.
It brings us closer to it.

Maybe the most meaningful things in life aren’t the ones we master once,
but the ones we’re brave enough to begin again.